The New York Times wants you to consult other trusted news sources too (but not, ahem, Fox News)

Other news organizations are running versions of the campaign celebrating UNESCO's World Press Freedom Day.

By

Simon Dumenco

Published On

May 03, 2018

Editor's Pick

The idea behind a new print ad campaign celebrating UNESCO's World Press Freedom Day is that we should all break out of our echo-chamber silos of news consumption. Per the tagline: "Read more. Listen more. Understand more. It all starts with a free press."

Good advice and good point, but what makes the simple ad so striking is that customized versions of it are running in publications around the world, which means various news organizations are telling their audiences to, you know, go check out the competition. The specific ad you see above, for instance, appears on page A7 of today's New York Times (the image was shared on Medium by NYT Chief Operating Officer Meredith Levien) and right after the opening line, "Don't just read The New York Times," we're advised to "Read The Wall Street Journal," with its famously right-leaning op-ed pages that often strike very different positions than those espoused by the NYT's famously left-leaning op-ed pages. The National Review, the conservative magazine founded by William F. Buckley Jr., also gets a recommendation.

But hey, wouldn't you know it? No shout-out for Fox News. (Among TV news providers, only CNN, the BBC, NBC News and MSNBC are mentioned in this particular ad.)

That's actually because the campaign, created by Droga5, is a joint effort by 36 news organizations--and Fox News isn't one of them. (No one ad name-checks all the participants; you can find the full list at UNESCO's Word Press Freedom Day site here.) The campaign also includes a banner ad referring readers to the slate of publications.

But still, Sean Hannity must have been weeping into his Froot Loops this morning.